Snow White and the Huntsman just keeps adding ridiculously awesome British actors to its cast. The executive producers of Fringe drop some crucial season four hints. Plus author David Mitchell explains how his unadaptable novel Cloud Atlas will be adapted.

Spoilers from this point forward!

Top image from Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Advertisement

Pacific Rim

The great Idris Elba is reportedly now confirmed for the lead role of Sensi, a part to which Tom Cruise was originally attached. He joins Sons of Anarchy's Charlie Humman and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Charlie Day. [Deadline]

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Real Steel

Here's a new Japanese trailer.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Zombieland and The Amazing Spider-Man's Emma Stone is now reportedly up for the female lead. [Variety]

Snow White and the Huntsman

Just when I thought this movie couldn't get anymore ludicrously overqualified, the awesomely terrifying Ray Winstone has signed on as the dwarf Trajan. Rounding out the cast is Stephen Marsan, who played Inspector Lestrade in the recent Sherlock Holmes and will play Winstone's twin brother Hadrian, while Stephen Graham, who has recently had some high profile success in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie and as Al Capone on Boardwalk Empire, will play the "angry-looking" Nero. [Heat Vision]

Contagion

Untitled Alien Spaceship Movie

Paramount has reportedly purchased a sci-fi action script by Snakes on a Plane writer John Heffernan. The movie has been described as "Die Hard on an alien spaceship", which is about as sophisticated a pitch as I would expect from the dude who wrote Snakes on a Plane. [Variety]

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell explains how co-directors Tom Twyker and the Wachowskis are approaching the adaptation of his sprawling, multi-genre novel:

They aren't attempting merely to film the book, which is why many adaptations come to grief – the novel's already there, so why spend all that effort on an audiobook with visuals? Rather, the three directors have assembled Cloud Atlas and reassembled it in a form which – fingers crossed – will be a glorious, epic thing. The reincarnation motif in the book is just a hinted-at linking device, but the script gives it centre stage to link the six worlds with characters, causes and effects. A novel can't do multi-role acting: a film can. The directors are playing to the strengths of their medium, just like I try to.

The cast already reportedly includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon, and Ben Whishaw, all of whom will play multiple roles throughout the various stories. [The Guardian]

The Crow Reboot

With the legal issues more or less resolved, The Crow remake is moving forward, and now Watchmen writer Alex Tse is working on the script. [ComingSoon.net]

Torchwood: Miracle Day

Here are some cast interviews, including a rather bizarre one with Bill Pullman.

Fringe

Wyman: We always look at it as a new chapter every season. It's like you get the book and so you can expect something you did not expect. We like to say that. It's not as easy as ‘Oh, it's a jump forward'; we always try to go a little deeper than that.Pinkner: Josh's character, Peter, made a heroic choice, and Walter recognizes he might have to sacrifice to save his son, and now we're fighting the consequences of that. Without revealing anything, we have some really— we have some things we're very excited about. We're bringing back some characters who were among our favorites.Wyman: We've had a lot of people say ‘We love the promos; we want to figure out time to watch', but not everyone has time to sit down and watch [three full] seasons, so we tried to make this [fourth] season like a new pilot. We did that a little bit last season, too, but it will just be an entry point for people to come in who haven't seen everything.

True Blood

Series creator Alan Ball says that, while a fifth season is definitely happening, the show can't run forever, in part because they'd be forced to address why immortal vampires are visibly aging:

"Right now I'm in the middle of negotiating for a fifth season. I don't know if I have any left in me after that. We'll see. [The show could end up] going a few more seasons. I think if we did 13 seasons we'd have to address why vampires are aging. Maybe there would be a bad batch of Tru Blood...With the supernatural thing you can always go places storywise that you couldn't go on another show."